In local news, 11 people are right now inside the court buildings and about to be charged with conspiracy to murder in connection with an alleged plot to bomb transatlantic flights. The Pimlico branch office here has been buzzed by helicopters all morning, so when I had a little slot in my schedule, I wandered over to Horseferry Road.
I got there after the suspects had arrived and obviously some time before they were again to emerge, but I did capture some footage, mainly of the assembled members of the news media who, unlike me, get paid to sit around and wait for things to happen.
David has just published the video interviews he grabbed from people in Hyde Park last Wednesday. Really interesting stuff here from a variety (though all male 😛 ) of perspectives, but of course you’ll be most interested (NOT!) to hear what inarticulate nonsense I came up with. God, the park looks dry! Hopefully the last few days rain has helped, but we do need lot’s more. It’s my favourite sort of London day today – blue skies, sunshine, cool breeze.
Hey dig the cool virtual earth map that I get to insert easily when I use Windows Live Writer (Beta). It’s a bit fiddly working out how to make it right-align and get my text to flow on the left as I’ve become accustomed to… but I’m sure I’ll find a way (Yup, found it – just dragged and dropped it)
That’s where I am – right now – I have an enormous red push pin stuck in my head and I’m standing out in the yard (where we did the Stormhoek experiments).
And I’d like to be able to add technorati tags easily & automagically (like Flock does). Aha – I spy a plugin (would like to not have to install .NET framework for it to work…)
Peter joined YouTube 5 days ago and is this week’s number #1 for subscriptions (#31 of all time, so far). He’s 78 years old and talks simply and beautifully from his armchair “in the middle of the UK” about his life and what he thinks. This one is his latest and most touching – he’s not surprisingly blown away by the reaction he’s had from members of the YouTube community.
Peter’s a member of what we’re calling the New Generation – people who never thought they’d get this old, let alone have another fifteen or twenty years to live. He rocks. Watch him and don’t get goosebumpy and dewy-eyed. I dare you.
Had lovely lunch with lovely Suw today. She reminded me of lots of things I’ve seen in passing and not delved into for a while, but I was particularly taken with the Odeo voice messaging service which you can now see on the sidebar.
Talk to me. Leave me a message and I’ll aggregate them into a wee podcast.
E-mail is b0rked, let’s try something differenter(ly).
A bunch of us sat around in a loosely self-organised way in a tinder-dry corner of Hyde Park to start talking about what might happen in London (and the rest of Britain) in 2012 from a cultural perspective other than sport.
I had to leave just as the conversation was really warming up but what I am interested in is what intangible things would we like to be left after the games are over (as opposed to the tangible stuff of stadiums, improved travel etc.) and the way I suggested going into that was to think about what we would do today if it were 2011 and we’d just had an “oh shit!” moment that we’d forgotten to do anything in preparation.
We’d started talking about how we were going to welcome all these guests into our country – which was an interesting tack in itself, what do you do to get ready when you have guests coming? Friendly jolly internationalist stuff.
But then as I walked across to Marble Arch I couldn’t help thinking that the park was already full of guests from all over the world today – how welcome do they feel? What do we do to help them out? Do we talk to them? Do we even recognise that they’re there? And I started to feel a little more uneasy about the preparedness we have to share our culture with visitors. I think it’s going to be fun trying to turn that around.
Well the newly formed Pimlico Institute for Stormhoek Studies (PISS) is now open for business and we present our first video – Let’s Go Mento – amazing, but dangerous stuff.
Customer Safety Warning: This experiment combines ordinary products in an extraordinary way.
Do NOT try this at home, unless
a) you’re extremely rich and can afford to throw away $10 bottles of wine just like that
b) you *like* the taste of Shiraz with a hint of sugar, glucose syrup, hydrogenated vegetable oil, etc…
b) you have a Stormhoek Security Licence (available for $500 from PISS) or
c) you’re stupid and you really really really want to.
Most mere mortals should stick to throwing their mentos into diet coke.
OK, so something weird happened the other day. I cut my hair myself – I know that you know this… after all it’s obvious that I’m a self-cut man. Oh god, I don’t like the way this one’s going.
Ahem.
So I had my clippers out and was using a recent copy of FT magazine to keep the shavings off my lovely carpet. Of course I was thinking about other stuff at the time – the price of lychees, how many beans make pi, when to book my next windsurfing lesson…etc.
LOOK what happened! All the tiny hairs just automagically jumped into a pattern around Senator Clinton’s mouth, that if you look at it with your eyes all scrunchy makes it look like she has a moustache and a little goatee! Weird.
And then the headline is “I know something you don’t know” – how’s that for a spooky double-entendre?
Well, the blogs back. But looking at the news this morning puts the mere missingness of my website in perspective.
Via Alex Itin I’ve been listening this morning to the music of Marcel Khalife the Lebanese Oud (lute) player. Listen and pray for peace.
I'm the founder of the Tuttle Club and fascinated by organisation. I enjoy making social art and building communities, if you'd like some help from me feel free to e-mail me: Lloyd dot Davis at Gmail dot Com or call +44 (0)79191 82825
Perfect Path 